Professor de Kleijn is Professor of Experimental Vascular Surgery at UMC Utrecht and Professor of the Netherlands Heart Institute, Utrecht The Netherlands. From 2012 to 2016, he was Research Professor of Surgery at NUS/NUHS and preclinical director of the Cardiovascular Research Institute (CVRI) Singapore. He was until 2016 professor of Cardiovascular Immunology and co-chair of Experimental Cardiology at UMC Utrecht. Since 1997 he is coordinating cardiovascular research from basic science, animal myocardial infarction and atherosclerotic studies (mouse and pig) towards clinical biobanking studies. Next to this, he is CTO of a UMC Utrecht spin-off biomarker company Cavadis BV and member of the Scientific Committee of ICIN and initiator and founder SOciety for Clinical Research and Translation of Extracellular Vesicles Singapore ”SOCRATES”. His research interests are: The innate immune system in cardiovascular disease and atherosclerosis & Biomarkers predictive for primary & secondary events with a focus on plasma extracellular vesicles.

Cardiovascular Disease (CVD) is with the cardiovascular events of Ischemic Heart Disease and Stroke, the number 1 and 2 cause of death in the world and expect to increase especially in Asia. Atherosclerosis is the underlying syndrome for CVD and atherosclerotic plaques are detectable already in teenagers. Therefore for cardiovascular disease, we have to determine who is at high risk for a cardiovascular event in a high-risk background of the atherosclerotic syndrome without the possibility of taking a plaque biopsy. The risk for Cardiovascular events is region-dependent so tailored plasma-based biomarkers are essential to guide prevention and treatment of billions.Collecting plasma extracellular vesicles is like taking a liquid biopsy from the pathological tissue that can be used for diagnosis and prognosis of the disease. Using biobanks of different ethnicities with large numbers of patients, we show that plasma extracellular vesicle content can be used as an accurate source for diagnosis and prognosis of cardiovascular disease.